I am the king of my toilet
It’s two days before Christmas, You still haven’t bought presents for your mother nor your ex–girlfriend, you haven’t yet begun wrapping any of the multitude of presents you managed to buy the rest of your family, and your toilet is leaking.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip… it’s not really a bothersome sound when you’re using the toilet, since you’re not the toilet–newspaper–reading type, but the waste of water and the inherent difficulty in getting your landlord to hire a plumber at this time of year is too much to bear. You have tools, you have a will, and leaky pipes aren’t that hard to fix, right? Undo the leaky end of the pipe with some multigrips, wrap some plumbers’ tape around the thread of the leaky connection, reconnect the pipe, and the leak should stop.
Well, you’d think so.
See, though the pipe is metal and the wall–fitting is metal, the toilet cistern that they connect to is 99% plastic… and plastic doesn’t like to be fucked with. Plastic snaps. Plastic snaps because you’re so busy wrapping plumbers’ tape around the metal wall–fitting that you get a little overzealous with your motions to get that freakin’ pipe outta the way. Plastic connectors snap off inside their metallic counterparts, and they’re mighty difficult to get out because you have nothing to hold on to to unscrew the damned thing. You snapped it off, dumbass. Poke at it with a screwdriver for a while, as if you’re trying to entice the busted connector out of its friend. Grow frustrated. Investigate alternative methods.
Fire. Plastic doesn’t like fire, right? Put the pipe over the stove and melt that bastard out. Choke for a while as the noxious gases of blackening plastic burn your eyes and throat. Yip with glee as the connector melts and comes out of the pipe easily. Now realize that though you’re solved that dilemma, the cistern connector is still all jaggedy and broken at one end from where it was snapped. Find the mitre saw, square off the connector, hope that enough thread remains on the connector to reconnect it. There is? Reconnect everything. Still leaking? Fantastic. Everything you’ve done so far has been for nought.
But now it’s leaking from both ends of the pipe, not just the wall–fitted end. Growl. Curse a little. Mother fucker.
Reach instinctively for the command–z keys and then realize that you’re sitting in front of a toilet cistern. Those wacky three–dimensional, interactive, non–computer–based objects we deal with in everyday life just don’t have undo. What else could be wrong with this pipe? The thread is clean, the plumbers’ tape should be giving us a nice tight seal, the o–rings are uh… the o–rings are… absent. Disintegrated. In dire need of replacement. Hop in your car, go and buy a little pack of o–rings from the hardware store. Replace o–rings. Re–tape threads (just to be doubly sure). Reconnect pipe. No leaks.
God damnit you’re good. You should be a plumber.